Will Urban France exist for our candidates?

The presidential election campaign in France is clearly emerging. Many issues are forming the subjects of proposals… Employment, tax system, social welfare, immigration, societal choices, the battles are being prepared… Among the programs presented these days, few proposals concern what is yet the common living environment of the majority of men and women, i.e the city and the urban life.

Why is it that in this XXIst century, in the century of cities, political choices which will determine the 5 coming years are so disincarnated of the urban fact, exactly where the major part of the population in France is, as everywhere in Europe and in a world being urban by a large majority ?
How can we continue to explain that the urban life has not so far been the object of an ambitious political vision? Not even, for the past or present executive bodies, a ministry worthy of the name which is in narrow relation with the transversality of the life of our cities? Other attributions are often attached to the theme : ministry of the city, of youngsters, of sports, of women, for example…, the city is often the object of a Secretary of State as a political official of its orientations.
How then can we speak about the city as the major place of living, of mixing, of diversity, of creation of value, of wealth, when its proper complexity is ignored by the highest authorities? How can we speak about the city as a complex and alive system, with its interdependencies ? How can we translate it into politics, public life and into the national guidelines ?

From one ministry to another, the urban policy is arbitrarily broken down into vertical and functional attributions, often skipping one another, when they are not in competition such as in housing environment, transport, sustainable development, energy, trade, economy, solidarity … Often limited to “districts” as the expression of a reducing and outdated vision, it is chiefly non-existent when in reality, the cities are today at the heart of our great social, economic, cultural, ecological and of resilience challenges. They are at the heart of the production of wealth and jobs.

Giving rise to laborious programs of decentralization, or through programs State-Region, the urban life is regarded as being archaic in the political visions which are vehiculed by the various candidates … A number of agencies, institutes, establishments, or missions, without being moreover always in-line, are minor strike forces when the main part of the cultural, social and economic life takes place in town. The COP21, the COP22, 17 ODD of the UNO, the conference HABITAT III, but also the powerful events of Mayors such as the Congress UCLG, the general Assembly of C40, show the major impact which generates the mayors’ presence and mobilization all around the world, and the vital force which they represent.

140 cities generate 44 % of the GDP in Europe and nevertheless the study of 2015 of the INSEE in France showed that “it is in the city centers of the big urban areas that we find the strongest rate of poverty, with important disparities according to regions, types of family, age …, much more than in suburbs and outer-urban areas. In these hearts of urban areas, 20 % of the households on average live below the poverty line”.

Don’t miss reading the study of the CREDOC of March 2016 : it is about France of the Invisibles: “the fear of facing a shift into poverty worries more than a third of the French people (36 %)“. Its update on December 5th, 2016, is alarming : “10 % of the French experience loneliness and 35 % sometimes feel isolated, an aggravating factor with age, unemployment and poverty“.

The loss of the urban social link devastates our communities. It’s time to draw conclusions as political grandstanding and populist rhetoric are present in this suffering urban France. Now it is time to mobilize, with vision, with ambition and with a future outlook, before it is too late …